


The Curse

by onnenlintu



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Gen, Kasvatus-verse, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-11-12 08:21:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18007268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onnenlintu/pseuds/onnenlintu
Summary: Kasvatus-verse, set about two years after Puolikas Ihminen. For everyone celebrating the 5th of March as Tuuri's birthday.





	The Curse

Onni sat at the kitchen table, trying to let the morning light do the work of waking him up. It was unlikely that it would work as well as it always seemed to for the likes of Reynir. The year had long since moved past the point where Onni could blame the long nights and dark mornings for being like this, the equinox a month past and the mornings now even losing a little of their crispness to the early sun. This morning, there was still a light snow falling, coating the last lumpy remains of the winter’s drifts with a powder that would turn to watery shine the moment the sun properly cleared the tall pines' tops. And Emil, here with Onni in the kitchen, had been giving the counter-top its own powdery white coating. Onni rubbed his eyes again and blearily turned away from the window, regarding Emil’s extremely early-morning baking with the same mild bafflement he felt towards nearly everything before 10 in the morning. Emil was clearing up and taking some small cake out of the oven. That didn’t look big enough for everyone to share at all.   
  
Despite having known Lalli for as long as it was possible to, Onni still jumped a little at him appearing sometimes. He hadn’t even heard the front door move or the sound of Lalli’s shoes coming off, and he would have passed through the kitchen almost as unnoticed had Emil not stopped him with a tap on the arm. “Lalli! Happy birthday!”   
  
Lalli and Onni both made the same sound of confusion when they heard it, Onni’s decidedly more pathetic for the fact he hadn’t already been out in the woods for four hours. Emil pointed out the cake on the side. “Lalli, it’s the 20th of April.”   
  
Lalli’s second noise was one of pleasant surprise and interest. “Is it? Oh, it is!”   
  
Watching Lalli take the still-warm cake in dishcloth-covered hands and bite into the whole thing like an apple, Onni wondered how he, too, had forgotten his cousin’s birthday. Probably he would have remembered once it got to about noon. The distinctness of the gap between it and the equinox did usually make it hard to forget. He decided to start looking out the window again when Emil started peppering Lalli’s cheeks in snuggly kisses, as if Onni wasn’t right there. To be fair to Emil, Onni also felt like he wasn’t exactly here. Mornings were very, very difficult sometimes.   
  
Lalli departed with cake in hand, doubtless running off to hide somewhere and enjoy a one-man party consuming the entire thing. Emil seemed very pleased with how his gift had been recieved, finishing his wipe-down of the counter just in time to conceal from Tuuri that there had ever been cake. She ran into the kitchen, triumphantly yelled something at Emil in Swedish, then ran out the other side. Viivi followed across the room seconds later, brandishing Tuuri’s trousers. Onni stretched out his arms, made a noise he was sure he used to be quite entertained by his dad making, and committed to standing up. Joining the world of awake people was probably no longer avoidable, and making sure Tuuri wore enough clothes until the snow was gone was his job too.   
  
Onni was just about awake by the first time he saw Reynir that day. At the moment, he usually awoke to feel Reynir’s spot in the bed already almost cooled, and found him again some time after the sheep’s morning needs had been seen to. When Reynir popped his head into the door of the toolshed, working in the frosty air had left his cheeks dewy and bonny, and his eyes were bright with that mysterious morning energy. The light behind him turned his endless flyaway hairs into a glowing reddish halo, and when Onni turned to greet him, the resentment he still felt towards the sun for rising melted into a shine like frost on paving-stones.   
  
Reynir didn’t linger there, as they both had plenty to do, and a perfectly good evening to have conversations in. Onni did feel a little less morose through the rest of his tinkering, though, and it made him think back to the scene he’d seen that morning. His brain ticked over it, wondering what equivalent gesture would fit Reynir’s birthday.   
  
When the idea had whirred around a little more, Onni found his brain was sticking on a few details. How long did he actually have before this would be relevant? Surely, he did actually know when Reynir’s birthday was. Oblivious and socially graceless as he could be, he was certain he wasn’t the type to live with someone for two years and never find this out.

Surely not.   
  
When _was_ it, though?

Onni stood in place at his work table, staring at the wall for a minute. He was dead certain he didn’t have some kind of issue with his memory, but now that he thought about it, he realised he had no recollection of Reynir celebrating his birthday at all. It wasn’t an Icelandic thing to not celebrate them, that he knew, because he knew when Reynir’s mother’s birthday was - and still remembered the date, after just one throwaway sentence Reynir had used to explain the mittens he’d been knitting. So how was it that he’d never learned Reynir’s birthday, nor seen any hint of it?  
  
The question bothered him all afternoon, growing in his mind until the horrible little roots of worry began to dig their way into other topics, disturbing the solid ground he thought he was on with all sorts of cracks and mucky crumbs. The evening was no better, as the anticipated chatting with Reynir never happened, Reynir instead opting to spend several hours in Miri’s room talking about who knows what. The more Onni thought about it and worried, the more he began to notice that things had been generally very odd between them lately. He had never had a reason to join together all the separate instances of Reynir scurrying out the room just as Onni arrived, and of Reynir seemingly needing to constantly do things in rooms where Onni was unlikely to go, but now that some unrelated worry was making him examine them it seemed like there might indeed be a pattern. Well, if something was up, he should probably go bother him about it.    
  
Onni knocked on Miri’s door. “Hello?”   
  
Inside the room, he could hear the idle murmuring abruptly cut off, then the frantic shuffling of cloth against cloth. When Miri opened the door, she opened it only a crack at first, glancing behind her before opening it totally. “Onni! Do you need something?”   
  
“Um.” Onni had not thought this far. “I just wondered what, er. Is Reynir okay in there?”   
  
He sounded incredibly stupid. He was likely _being_ incredibly stupid. Miri did a good impression of someone not bothered out by this intrusion, merely looking gently puzzled as she replied “Yes?”   
  
“We’re just chatting!” Reynir piped up, speaking a little faster and more highly pitched than usual. It was impossible to look Reynir in the face and really feel like he was lying about something, but this really was quite odd. Onni could feel different sides of him struggling with it as Reynir talked.   
  
Reynir’s smile was always a little awkward. There was no reason to read anything into this. Onni was definitely just being ridiculous, and projecting his own guilt about having forgotten when Reynir’s birthday was, or something. Emil and Jaana accused people of ‘projecting’ all the time in their long nosy gossip sessions about everyone they'd ever met, and while Onni mostly felt that giving “feeling terrible” and “being an ass” a bunch of new names did nothing to fix them, they were probably onto something with this concept.   
  
“Um, well, good. You two er, have fun.” Onni shut the door in Miri’s face and immediately retreated without another word.   
  
Later that night, when Reynir finally came up to their room, he found Onni stroking Herr Nilsson with two of her children also piled in his lap. “Onni? You seem anxious.”   
  
“Anxious?” Onni stroked the cat a little faster, clenching his jaw even tighter. “What makes you think that?”   
  
Reynir crawled onto the bed behind him, brushing Onni’s hair out of his eyes with gentle fingers and making one of his concerned little noises. “You seemed a bit off earlier. And you also seem like you’re having one of your bad spots lately. You’re taking even longer than usual to wake up every morning.”   
  
“Mm.” Onni felt a flash of guilt again for apparently not remembering basic information about Reynir’s life, when Reynir cared enough to be this observant, and come rub Onni’s neck even when he was being weird and suspecting things he couldn’t really name.   
  
“Sorry there’s not much I can do to help.”   
  
“You always help”, said Onni, near-automatically but still truthfully.   
  
As usual - at least usual for “one of these times”, which Onni supposed it was, now that Reynir had gone and pointed it out - Reynir fell soundly asleep while Onni was still lying awake fretting. With Reynir asleep, and no longer putting a sweet and honest face in Onni’s line of sight, some of the nameless worry returned. Maybe he deserved Reynir hiding something from him. He definitely didn’t deserve everything Reynir appeared to be. Maybe the universe was finally coming to tell him he should never have believed things were this good.   
  
Onni didn’t notice himself falling asleep, and his wandering through the dream world passed almost as if it were a non-mage’s dreams, hazy and barely memorable. When he woke again, Reynir was gone, and Onni had slept so late that the other side of the bed was as freezing cold as the rest of the attic.   
  
There were things to do today that kept his mind off fretting, for a while. The season for burning back the trees was here again, and Emil was busy leading the troop of local youngsters that would do it, meaning Onni had a lot of housework to keep up with. Jaana and Reynir were both gone, at the neighbours’ place helping with their sons’ seemingly neverending need for Icelandic practice, and Onni was well occupied keeping Tuuri close to him while he did all his chores. The stark breeze off the melting lake bit at the buds that now covered the ground, and so did Tuuri. Onni knew she was a bit old now to genuinely not understand what things did and didn’t belong in her mouth, and refused to give her the satisfaction of reacting to her exaggerated “Mmm! Nam-nam!” sounds as she licked flowerbuds.   
  
She soon gave up, opting instead to cling to Onni’s legs when he went inside to clean the floor. She was getting so heavy. Onni was in the middle of trying to show her how she could use her own cloth, pointing out that there was plenty to do if she was bored, when the troupe of tree-burners returned.   
  
Emil came through the door first, then almost all of the neighbours’ sons, forming a mass of lads chattering and shoes clunking as they came off and hit the corner of the entryway. The sooty stains on their clothes and frazzled look to some of their hair showed that Emil had led them to very enthusiastically complete results, and they looked well exercised by their day of being the scourges of all loose and excess branches. From the kitchen, Onni heard Emil call out to the crowd. “Yep, there’s almost a whole loaf left in here! You can come get some before you have to walk home!”   
  
Leaving Tuuri underfoot in there with them, Onni continued trying to sort the house out, occupying his mind by listening to the conversation coming from the kitchen. It seemed they had indeed had a long and productive day, and they enjoyed some hard-earned time off their feet before Emil shooed them all out again, reminding them that there was still plenty to do tomorrow. “Make sure you all get a good breakfast!”   
  
Tuuri’s little personal child-chaos vortex, usually surrounding her just as markedly as it surrounded most four-year-olds, seemed like eerie silence in comparison once that crowd had left. Onni took the chance to go hide in his room for a bit now that Emil was back and available. Reynir was likely right that these last few weeks were turning out to be “one of those times”. From his window, with the last of the daylight, he saw Jaana and Reynir returning from their day at the neighbours’ place. Reynir was carrying a cloth bag in one hand, and a bucket of the neighbours’ milk in the other. Deciding to come down and talk, Onni met him in the kitchen, and found that the cloth bag had already disappeared.   
  
“How was the day?” Onni took the milk bucket from the table and put it out of Tuuri’s reach in the cold larder, returning to Reynir with what he hoped passed for a happy face.   
  
“Oh, so busy! We were teaching Icelandic all day long!”   
  
“To whom?”   
  
“To the neighbours’ sons?” Reynir shifted, and Onni wondered if the slight pink around his freckles was just from carrying that big milk bucket all the way home.   
  
“Weren’t they busy helping Emil?”   
  
“Oh, um, most of them were left at home, so we had loads to do, took all day, haha!”   
  
“Ah.”   
  
“I have to … um, talk to Miri about something, now. I’ll be up later. Hope your day was okay.” Pecking Onni on the cheek, Reynir scurried past him and around the corner, leaving Onni wondering when it was that Reynir started telling incredibly obvious lies.   
  
Of course, within ten minutes Onni felt bad, and tried to find a reason he must be misreading the situation. What Reynir had told him just couldn’t be true, though. He’d seen a half-dozen lads arrive, then heard them talk amongst themselves about how definitely outside they’d spent their whole day. Onni knew these things didn’t add up, and he didn’t just mean the details of the day. Reynir being deceptive for seemingly no reason was so unlike him - or so unlike the him Onni thought he knew nowadays, at least - that it was deeply disconcerting.   
  
Onni recalled the jokes Jaana and Emil constantly made about their neighbour, and that Reynir did usually join in with calling him by the flattering moniker they’d invented. Mentally adding that fact to Reynir's bizarre secrecy about visiting “Hot Teppo’s” house, and following that train of thought, made Onni feel a bit nauseous. He never knew if he should even be having that sort of reaction. He’d seen Lalli react to Emil being a flirt with random people at gatherings across the lake, never showing anything but the same kind of mirth he displayed at all of Emil’s self-flattering tendencies. Onni had felt a bit funny at the time, knowing he himself would never find it as hilarious. Maybe Onni being a clingy mess was exactly what Reynir was so sick of, to be so distant he didn't even bother saying when his birthday was.     
  
“Onni?” Reynir appeared in the door of their room. “Are you feeling any better tonight?”   
  
“Maybe.” It would be no wonder, if Reynir really did find it easy to make a fool of Onni, because once again seeing him in person made Onni wonder how he could ever have suspected him lying. Logic told him that he’d seen Reynir lie to his face, not even hours before, and that this emotional reaction could not be trusted. It felt worse than anything else he’d been wondering about since this started.   
  
It wasn’t as though Reynir had never lied to him. Onni did, in general, dismiss that one huge and early lie as something they’d moved past. But, his logical mind reminded him, the Reynir that had told him Tuuri was fine was still the same man who stood in front of him now. The conflict between Onni's instinct and his mental calculations continued as Reynir stood there, once again looking just that shade more awkward than usual, seeming concern wrinkling his forehead as he took in Onni’s blank face.   
  
Reynir cleared away a few of the cats on their bed and sat down, ignoring the trills and mews of annoyance as he snuggled up close to Onni. “If there’s something you need to talk about, you know I want to hear it, right?”   
  
Onni did know this, or had known it two days ago. Logic and instinct fought in his brain, various phrases nearly bubbling out of his mouth before bursting into empty air, until finally instinct won and sent his honest thoughts into the world. “You’re hiding something from me.”   
  
Reynir tensed up. “Oh, geez. Is _that_ what the problem is?”   
  
He wasn’t denying it. Onni pressed his palms between his thighs and stared at his knees. He always felt like an idiot child when he needed to talk about his feelings, even after all this time. “Reynir. What are you hiding from me?” The tenseness and pleading in his voice were pathetic.    
  
Reynir starting to laugh, in the way one did after an unexpected explosion or other slightly shocking misfortune, was both baffling and worrying. He stood, pressing his face into his hands for a moment, then told Onni to wait where he was. “Don’t worry. Please. I’m sorry.”   
  
Of course, Onni fit as much worrying as possible into the two minutes it took for Reynir to return, and the cloth bag he’d seen earlier did nothing to explain the situation. Reynir opened it, and when Onni saw the sweater - nearly complete, definitely the product of long hours of work, and also definitely one Onni had never seen before - the way everything clicked into place made him feel like he’d achieved a whole new level of stupid.   
  
“I um, I wanted to surprise you. It was nearly done, too. You could even try it on at this point, although I’m pretty sure it’s right already.” Reynir held out one of its arms, and it did indeed look perfectly sized for Onni’s body. Onni wondered how he’d managed to suspect all he had, while not noticing that those long-string needles he’d whittled and glued for Reynir had gone missing from their place, in the way such things generally did when they were in use.   
  
Reynir sat down next to him again, and Onni took the sweater in his hands. He felt the thick material, padded as it was by the strings inside that let the whole garment be covered in complex patterns. It was going to be incredibly warm. Onni could make nothing more beautiful than a basic sock, which only increased his appreciation of how much skill and time this sort of thing required. “Was this what you were hiding at the neighbours’ place to do, too?”   
  
“Oh, yeah. Maija wanted company while she did something similar.”   
  
Onni nodded. Of course. People usually did. It was a lot of work, after all.   
  
“Onni? What’s wrong?”   
  
Onni hated how weepy he got sometimes. “I feel terrible.”   
  
Reynir nodded. “I know. It’s not been a good time for you. It’ll get better, though, this always passes.”   
  
“No, I mean I feel terrible for a reason.”   
  
“Hm?” Reynir looked at the jumper, as if trying to find the reason somewhere inside it.   
  
“I started worrying about everything because I realised I have no idea when your birthday is. You’ve lived with me for two years, and you’re _making me this_ ” - Onni gestured at the garment in front of him - “and _I_ don’t even remember when your birthday is.”   
  
The light _“Oh..”_ from Reynir’s side seemed like it must not bode well. The few deep breaths, as if Reynir was about to speak and continually deciding against it, were excruciating to listen to. When Reynir finally spoke, he sounded sadly resigned. “It’s the 5th of March.”   
  
Onni wondered for a moment why this had been such a terrible piece of information, then felt like he’d been hit in the gut, with the double whammy of remembering and realising he had needed a moment to remember.   
  
“I just really didn’t want to, I don’t know, intrude by making anyone feel like they had to be happy about it…” Reynir continued, trailing off with his eyes pointing anywhere but Onni’s face.   
  
Onni contemplated this, turning the sweater over in his hands to match the turning-over of his thoughts. “You were going to pretend you didn’t have a birthday forever, just to avoid mentioning it?”   
  
“Um. I was hoping there would be some kind of good time to mention it. Eventually.”   
  
Onni nodded. He did understand what it was like, to wait for a right time to speak despite the increasing unlikeliness of it ever coming, and end up hiding more and more to prevent a dreaded conversation. With the fog of worry starting to clear in his head, it occurred to him that this was one of the most Onni-like things Reynir had ever done.   
  
“I really don’t expect you to celebrate it. The last thing I want is to make anyone feel, I don’t know, _obliged_.” Reynir was kind of talking to his feet, another thing that made Onni wonder if he was rubbing off on Reynir just a little too much.   
  
“We could.”   
  
“You don’t have to.”   
  
“We could think about it.”   
  
“Oh.” Reynir took the jumper from Onni’s lap and let his twitchy hands start working on it again. “Maybe. I guess we have, um… eleven? No, nine - ”   
  
“Ten and a half months to think about it.” Ten months and thirteen days exactly, if Onni wasn’t mistaken.   
  
“Ah. Yep. That’s the one.”   
  
They sat in silence for a little while, Onni listening to the purring of one of the cats that had wedged itself against his back, and the gentle clicking of Reynir’s needles. “I’m sorry it’s always so difficult.”   
  
“What is?”   
  
Onni gestured broadly at himself.   
  
“Onni, if you think this counts as difficult, you have a very different memory to mine of how it used to be.” Reynir poked him in the arm. “You could have said something earlier, though.”   
  
Onni wasn’t sure how to feel about all of that. “Um, well. I really like this sweater. Really, a lot."    
  
Reynir beamed. “Good! It should keep you extra warm! Not just because of the colourwork, there’s runes here, and here, too.” He indicated where he meant with enthusiastic gestures, and pointed at a few places by the neck that were yet to be knit, as well.   
  
Worrying for several days running had been phenomenally exhausting. If Onni had to find a silver lining, falling asleep at the same time Reynir did for once was an acceptable one. Spring usually came to his dreams much later than it did to the waking world, but sleeping nestled up against Reynir’s hair, the breeze in the Saimaa of his dreams blew warm and full of the scent of hay.


End file.
